Chebucto Regional Softball Club

Really fun video. Getting a consistent group together is probably the hardest part of running a game. If you can enjoy a game with even as few as one or two players, that can work well. I use a few tricks to keep groups going: - Have six full-time players. - Have two "on call" players – these are players who are interested but might not be able to commit regularly and are willing to jump in when a spot is open. - Run with as few as four. This means it takes *five* people cancelling before you can't run a game. - Run at a consistent time each week. - Run shorter games – I go for 3 hours. That's helped me keep multiple groups going for ten years with one group consistent for about 20 years.

I wrote an article with my thoughts on running mysteries here: https://slyflourish.com/running_investigations_and_mysteries.html

The new DMG likewise has a big table for figuring out how many rolls would succeed given a target number and number of rolls. I have two approaches I prefer these days: 1. The damage pool. Instead of tracking individual damage, you pool damage in a single tally and remove the last monster hit when it crosses the HP of a monster. Add up all the damage and remove a bunch of monsters with an area attack. 2. Group up sets of monsters into four groups and then roll once for each group. If sixteen skeletons have to save versus a turn undead. Group them into four groups of four and roll four times. We have a handful of ideas like this in Forge of Foes and the Lazy DMs Companion and released them under a CC license here: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html#runninghordes

I put my top tips here after about 15 years of collecting the best tips from hundreds of GMs: https://slyflourish.com/top_advice.html - Let the Story Unfold at the Table - Set Up Situations and Let the Characters Navigate Them - Be On the Characters Side - Use Tools and Techniques that Help You Prepare to Improvise - Focus on your Next Game - Build Your World, Campaign, and Adventures from the Characters Outwards - Pay Attention to Pacing - Focus on the Fiction First and Mechanics Second